Catherine Lu Research Articles

Introduction to Symposium: Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements

ABSTRACT This introductory article summarizes some key elements of Monique Deveaux’s book Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements and situates that book in the philosophical literature on global poverty. It then provides an outline of the symposium contributions by Ashwini Vasanthakumar, Luis Cabrera, Brooke Ackerly, Catherine Lu, and Avery Kolers.

Catherine Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics

Catherine Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics

Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. By Catherine Lu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 336p. $105.00 cloth, $32.99 paper.

Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. By Catherine Lu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 336p. $105.00 cloth, $32.99 paper.

Shame, Justice, and Decolonization: A Reply to Catherine Lu

This paper discusses two possible difficulties with Catherine Lu’s powerful analysis of the moral response to our shared history of colonial evil; both of thesedifficulties stem from the rightful place of shame in that moral response. The first difficulty focuses on efficacy: existing states may be better motivated by shame atthe past than by a shared duty to bring about a just future. The second focuses on equity: it is, at the very least, possible that shame over past misdeeds ought to bebrought into the conversation about present duties, in a manner more robust than Lu’s analysis allows.

Structural Alienation: Lu’s Structural Approach to Reconciliation from within a Relational Framework

In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu argues that structural reconciliation, rather than interactional reconciliation, ought to be the primary normative goal for political reconciliation efforts. I suggest that we might have good reason to want to retain relational approaches – such as that of Linda Radzik – as the primary focus of reconciliatory efforts, but that Lu’s approach is invaluable for identifying the parties who ought to bear responsibility for those efforts in cases of structural injustice. First, I outline Lu’s analysis of reconciliation, where she argues for the normative priority of structural approaches within the global political sphere, and propose that it will be useful to identify whether or not a relational account could instead identify underlying structural injustices. Second, I examine one particular relational account of reconciliation (based on Radzik’s account of atonement) and argue that this type of account brings to light underlying structural injustices of the kind Lu is concerned with. Finally, I identify an issue for relational accounts in identifying relevant responsible parties for reconciliation before returning to Lu’s structural account to address this gap.

Injustice and Collectivization in World Politics

In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu endorses the idea that those who contribute to the reproduction of structural injustice have responsibilities to address that injustice (Lu, 2017). However, in the book, Lu does not explore the grounds and justification for recognising such a responsibility. In order to address this deficit, this paper proposes that those likely to contribute to the reproduction of structural injustice, in the future, have precautionary duties, in the present, that require them to take action aimed at preventing their future contribution. It is proposed that these ‘collectivization duties’ (Collins, 2013) require them to act responsively with a view to forming a collective that can end the structural injustice in question. This account recommends a collective-action solution alongside recognising that each socially connected agent is obliged to act. However, it does not entail that amorphous groups bear responsibilities and is appropriate in its attribution of blame, thus avoiding both Nussbaum’s (2011) critique of perpetually forward-looking accounts and the ‘agency objection’ (Wringe, 2010).

Nonalienation among peoples: Symposium on Catherine Lu’s Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics

ABSTRACT This contribution gives an appreciation of Catherine Lu’s book Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics and introduces some concepts and motifs, themes and arguments that play a role in the discussion by the three commentators Reinhard Wolf, Alasia Nuti, and Kimberly Hutchings in this book symposium. The discussion adds to the development of the categories of structural injustice, alienation, and reconciliation, and especially of the systematic relations among them. I conclude that the notion of nonalienation as reconciliation in world order will be worth investigating even independently of questions of historical injustice.

Structural injustice and the legitimacy of the state-centric system

ABSTRACT Catherine Lu’s seminal Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics is right to stress the enduring nature of some colonialist structural indignities. It is less clear, however, if structural injustices justify Lu’s demand for revolutionary changes of the global order. Before transforming the pluralist state-centric system, we need transparent criteria that help us agree on the severity of structural injustices. Considering Lu’s strong focus on the colonialist origins of contemporary injustices, one would also like to know if and how their historical background affects their present moral status. The essay concludes that, in a multicultural global society with diverse moral values, we should focus on tackling the most glaring injustices and on rectifying those where accountabilities are least controversial.

Review of Catherine Lu: Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics

Catherine Lu’s recent book argues that we should conceive colonial wrongs not as unjust interactions between individuals or states, but rather as structural injustices of the international system. I review her book and raise some questions about her approach.

Justice and reconciliation in world politics

Despite the realist view according to which world politics is the realm of power and abuse, much research has been conducted over the last decades on how ethics could domesticate power. Academics have been tasked with making sense of a variety of different political innovations—including truth and reconciliation commissions, international tribunals, official apologies and reparations—which have tried to introduce ethical values into international relations. Have these attempts been successful? Have they, at least, managed to morally reproach the international crimes committed in the past and that continue to be committed today? These are the questions addressed by Catherine Lu’s book.

Redressing and addressing colonial injustice

ABSTRACTThis symposium introduction summarizes the main arguments in Catherine Lu’s book, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics.

Responsibility for structural injustice

ABSTRACTFollowing Iris Marion Young, Catherine Lu allocates responsibility for transforming unjust global structures to the agents who participate in perpetuating and reproducing those structures. She also adopts Young’s qualitative distinction between the ‘liability’ and ‘social connection’ models of responsibility, reserving the first for interactional injustice where identifiable victims and perpetrators are involved, and the second for structural injustice where unjust outcomes emerge without any identifiable wrongdoers. This article’s argument is that Young’s and Lu’s specific allocation of the burden for transforming unjust global structures makes sense only if we reject the notion of a qualitative distinction between two models of responsibility and acknowledge instead that there is continuity in the conceptual tools available for thinking about responsibility for both interactional and structural injustice.

Motivation and reconciliation in Catherine Lu’s conception of global justice

ABSTRACTIn Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics (2017), Catherine Lu argues that those of us who have been thinking about problems of justice in the aftermath of cataclysmic international events have been aiming too narrowly and too low. We have been aiming too narrowly in the sense that we have focused too much attention on states and individuals as responsible parties and not enough on international structures. In other words, there are multiple sites of justice and all the action is not to be found at the level of interpersonal or interstate interactions. Much of Lu’s discussion of structure is drawn directly from Iris Marion Young’s work (or, at least, one version of Young). In addition, we have aimed too low by not devoting attention to the widespread forms of alienation that are the result of events and persistent unjust international structures (the case that she returns to throughout the text is that of colonialism). She calls for a more historical and sociological turn in the literature on transitional justice. This essay raises a few questions regarding the ideas of culpability and motivation in Lu’s account of structural justice. In particular, if focuses on Lu’s use of Young and then concludes with a brief consideration of her notion of alienation.

Just and Unjust Interventions in World Politics: Public and Private, by Catherine Lu

Catherine Lu Just and Unjust Interventions in World Politics: Public and Private Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. 239 pp., $31.00 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-230-28565-1The subject of military intervention has always been prominent feature of normative debates in international relations (IR), and the past decade has been no exception. In the past 10 years there have been so many publications and books about the subject of intervention and the corollary idea of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) that it has become increasingly difficult to say much new about it. Catherine Lu's book, however, succeeds in this regard by providing fresh normative analysis of intervention based on the public-private distinction borrowed from feminist political theory. Originally published in 2006, the paperback version of Lu's book, Just and Unjust Interventions in World Politics, was released in 2011 and contains new Afterword where the author addresses developments since the original publication of the book, most notably, the debate over R2P. The rest of the book, however, remains unchanged from the original edition.This book's central argument is that the debate over humanitarian intervention can be illuminated by the public-private distinction as espoused in feminist political theory. In short, the author uses the public-private distinction as analogous to the international-domestic distinction in IR and as way to illuminate the normative structure of international society more broadly, as well as to probe issues pertaining to the responsibilities of, and the relationships among, different international actors involved in intervention. The book also uses this public-private construct as way to critically examine prevailing normative approaches to the question of intervention and the legitimacy of recent interventionary practices.The book begins with an application of the public-private distinction to IR, with the main insight being essentially that affairs are those which states regard to be internal matters protected from interference from external actors, whereas matters are those which are the legitimate business of the international community. The analogy is thus both intriguing and intuitive. For example, family privacy has historically been way for domestic abuse to occur unchecked by outside authorities, similar to how state sovereignty has permitted states to commit variety of injustices toward their own people-such as mass atrocities-largely unchecked by international society. In both cases, we see how there should be clear limits placed upon what actions or policies can be justified as a private matter, which is to say as part of state's sovereign prerogative.In the next three chapters the author critically examines prevailing normative approaches to the issue of intervention in light of the public-private distinction. This analysis begins in chapter 3 with an examination of realism and ultimately concludes that this approach is incapable of supporting morally consistent normative position either for or against intervention. Chapter 4 is similarly critical investigation of communitarianism, which fares little better than realism, as the author reveals the inconsistency and inadequacy of communitarian accounts of the public and private lives of states. In chapter 5, however, Lu argues that unlike the realist and communitarian perspectives, cosmopolitan perspective is capable of generating moral considerations that can provide morally consistent account of intervention that can accommodate and shape the private and public lives of states. …

What's wrong with colonialism

This article was written with the support of the Australian Research Council DP110100175, for which I am grateful. Earlier versions were presented at Bristol, Princeton, San Diego, Uppsala, Dublin, Sheffield, LSE, ANU, Darmstadt, Copenhagen, Melbourne, and Queen's University at Kingston. I am grateful to participants at these events and especially to Chris Armstrong, Anne Barron, Chris Bertram, Garrett Brown, Dan Butt, Amandine Catala, Paige Digeser, Chris Essert, Graham Finlay, Katrin Flikschuh, Bob Goodin, Leigh Jenco, Catherine Lu, David Miller, Margaret Moore, Avia Pasternak, Nic Southwood, Tim Waligore, and Jonathan White for very helpful conversations and comments. I am particularly indebted to Annie Stilz for reading several drafts and to the editor and reviewers of Philosophy & Public Affairs for helping me prepare the final version.

What's Wrong with Colonialism

This article was written with the support of the Australian Research Council DP110100175, for which I am grateful. Earlier versions were presented at Bristol, Princeton, San Diego, Uppsala, Dublin, Sheffield, LSE, ANU, Darmstadt, Copenhagen, Melbourne, and Queen's University at Kingston. I am grateful to participants at these events and especially to Chris Armstrong, Anne Barron, Chris Bertram, Garrett Brown, Dan Butt, Amandine Catala, Paige Digeser, Chris Essert, Graham Finlay, Katrin Flikschuh, Bob Goodin, Leigh Jenco, Catherine Lu, David Miller, Margaret Moore, Avia Pasternak, Nic Southwood, Tim Waligore, and Jonathan White for very helpful conversations and comments. I am particularly indebted to Annie Stilz for reading several drafts and to the editor and reviewers of Philosophy & Public Affairs for helping me prepare the final version.

Against Friendship between Countries

The idea that countries (or nations or peoples) should sometimes be friends is embedded in everyday talk about international relations and receives sophisticated defences in recent works by P. E. Digeser and Catherine Lu. The idea relies upon an analogy between interactions between persons and interactions between countries — an analogy that this article argues to be ontologically and ethically dubious. Persons and countries are very different entities, meriting very different kinds of treatment. The article explores three different relationships between countries that could be understood as friendships, arguing each such relationship is either undesirable or explanatorily impotent.

The Liberalism of Fear and the Counterrevolutionary Project

Much of Catherine Lu's response resonates in tone and substance with my article. Like me, Lu speaks in the language of moral psychology and relies heavily on the later work of that preeminent moral psychologist among liberal theorists, Judith Shklar. She agrees, moreover, with both Shklar and me that victimhood (and the fear it produces) is morally damaging more often than not, and that the recent literature on human rights, which focuses on the relation of victim and perpetrator, tends to let the beneficiaries of systemic injustice off the hook. Lu and I, thus, share much common ground that other respondents might have contested, and I am grateful that her perceptive criticisms focus on points within my argument that I am pleased to elaborate.